Y2/D248 - Day Off

I skipped the lunar eclipse - although I think I saw it - because the moon was covered in clouds and reddish orange, which according to National Geographic's post on Twitter was the lunar eclipse.

Spent most of the day cleaning out my drawers and switching my summer/fall clothing for my fall/winter clothing. Put all the summer clothing and spring stuff in bags under the bed, and my trunk. This included all the black work pants that no longer fit me. I don't know about anyone else? But I gained weight during the pandemic. Many of my co-workers appeared to have lost weight during it - granted half of them did it the hard way via COVID.

Almost strained my back switching the clothes around, since the drawers, bags, top of my bed and trunk are all below waist level and required lots of bending and squatting. I'm six foot, my bed, dresser, and trunk is not.

While doing it, I listened to Bruce Campbell's sequel to "Chins That Kill", on audio. Campbell does an entertaining audiobook about the B movie industry. Although he is old school baby boomer, so warning, some of it may be offensive? Not a lot, he's liberal. (Well, unless you are conservative and if you are - I'm not sure why you are still reading this journal. I'd have thought that I'd have scared you off by now.) But he does make a few generalizations about the Roma, based on the folks he ran into in Belarus, and talks about homoerotic subtext, although that's not that offensive.
It's just off-color?

Goes into some depth on Bubba Hoptech - which is the best B Movie Horror flick I've ever seen next to Tremors. (Not that I'm much of an expert.)
I did however love Bubba Hoptech. Campbell plays Elvis, who is in a old rest home, suffering from Cancer on his pecker, and Ossie Davis plays a man who is convinced he's JFK. They stumble upon a mummy, Bubba Hoptech, and fight him. Apparently it was low budget, and a somewhat plodding production. Ossie's grandkids talked him into doing it - they were fans of the Evil Dead films.

He also talks about making low-budget sci-fi films in Belarus for the Syfy channel. And why this is not the best gig on the planet. (What he say about Eastern Europeans kind of rings true - all those years under a dictatorship in an communist regime, kind of made them suspicious of things. They don't see the need to wear seat belts for example - they kind of apply the same logic to seat belts that they do to vaccine's - ie. "My friend didn't wear one, was thrown clear, but the folks next to them who did, died." Yes, but 98% of the people who don't die, while those who do survive. But hey just because your friend was lucky... Clearly logic is not taught in Eastern Europe?

***

Mother told me that Rittenhouse was acquitted.

ME: Fucking hell. I hope the judge, jury, everyone ...[fifteen minute rant ensues]
Mother: It was an odd trial, I can see why the jury was confused. The judge handled it badly. They had over fifteen pages of jury instructions to go through..
Me: And they aren't exactly critical thinkers...to begin with.
Mother: Also the prosecution's hands were tied, because of the things the judge did, it was a weird case.
ME: Sigh. Twitter will explode.

I think there should be a couple of lawsuits filed. Twitter exploded of course. So, I retreated to Soap Twitter.

**

Even though I took the day off - my phone buzzed with notifications from Crazy Workplace - which had been quiet the last two weeks, but today felt the need to pester me. I blatantly ignored them. If it was important? They could have bugged me when I was actually in the office, not on my day off.

***

I feel like all I do is whine? I despise whiners. I'm sorry. I'm not that miserable actually. It was a pretty and sunny day. I got to stay home and sleep in. Had my first good sleep in days. Slept until 6:15 AM, then decided to go back to sleep - and slept until 8. Mostly dreamless. OR don't remember much of it.

And been watching fluffy television. "Million Little Things", "GH", and "Superman & Lois" - which has gotten really good. I rather like this iteration of the Superman and Lois story. Tyler H is a really good Superman, and an excellent Clark Kent. He truly convey's the differences between the two men, and the depth of both characters. An alien living among us, and struggling to fit in, and never quite doing so. Also, the focus is on them equally and their marriage, and their kids. It's an adult take on the tale, and I find it to be more layers than previous versions and as a result more relatable. It's less "superhero" or "comic bookish", and more a series take on the story. In addition - it's filmed like an actual movie.

Reading a rather amusing, if poorly crafted, romance novel. This one features a clutsy and somewhat daffy heroine and her stiff and somewhat hapless husband. I like the fact that the main focus is on the marriage not the courtship. There's not as much dialogue as I'd like - mostly summarized in descriptive passages. I'm not sure the writer is comfortable with dialogue? I can always tell - writers who aren't comfortable with dialogue tend to summarize it, and focus on descriptive passages and the characters thoughts instead, writers who are good at dialogue - tend to use dialogue to convey what the characters are thinking and to get across key plot points. You don't have to be good at dialogue to write a good novel, but summarizing all of it - can get tiresome. Also the writer's syntax seems slightly off - I think she's trying to write in the syntax of the period, and that's not always a good idea - well unless you are Georgette Heyer, and well she was living in the period more or less. Trying to write in the syntax of specific time period that you are not currently living in is akin to writing in a language that you aren't immersed in. It's a given that you will screw up - or worse write it in a "text book" laden manner that no actual person would have spoken in. Like speaking "text book" English or "text book" French - no one speaks that. Language is laced with slang, mispronunciations, colloquialisms, abbreviations, etc. Listen to how folks speak - they don't speak in clean and well punctuated sentences.

I know this because I listen to how people talk on the street, in trains, at my workplace, in the apartment complex, on subways, etc. Often in fifty different languages and accents. They aren't neat about it. Neat writing comes across as stiff in a fictional novel, it has no pizazz, not emotional heft.

I like audio books - because often you can tell right off the bat if the writer has an ear for how people speak and language. If they don't - the audio book will fall flat and not work.

**

Random Picture of the Night...